


No Creature Born to be a Dove

by ERNest



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Introspection, Past Child Abuse, Poverty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-10 22:51:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11701527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ERNest/pseuds/ERNest
Summary: Éponine looks at what her life has become, and recalls a songbird sister, but memories are a funny thing.





	No Creature Born to be a Dove

     Éponine remembers a songbird sister who never sang. At the very edges of recollection they must have played together once, when they first met. Their game was thoughtless and part of the secret world which children inhabit, and she, being the eldest, was the leader. It may have been a false memory, because ever after, the girl called the Lark was little more than a drudge. Hatred was so easy to learn when the woman who always coddled her modeled it so well.  
     There’s no reason to remember that little stick of a girl, and less to feel pity. The girl was always dirty, which is reason enough for contempt so long as Éponine doesn’t look at the streaks of filth on her own skin, or at the squalor in which she lives. Or else the past stings more sharply now that she’s become the thing she hates. Worse than the Lark’s dirty face was the way she always stole the dolls that had been bought for _her_ , and for Azelma. In the end, she hadn’t been punished at _all_ , but received an even more beautiful doll from the gentleman who saw it all unfold.  
     (And then she got to escape, Éponine carefully does not think, which is the most unforgivable sin of them all)

 

     Éponine has no mysterious benefactor, no Christmas Miracle, and so she must seek other means of escape from a life she didn’t expect to turn out how it has. She finds her solace in mirrors, reminds herself that she is still a very pretty girl, who may yet grow up to become a lovely young lady. When she is sent by one man to be at the service of another, she chatters on about nothing and everything simply so she doesn’t need to be where she is.  
     If she can slip away with her body and not just her words, she takes the opportunity at once, and only worries about the consequences of coming home late several blocks away from where she began. It’s enough to see the city in solitude and transform it into landscapes belonging to a fairytale. Any passerby can be a character in the ongoing drama that unfolds in her mind. It’s better than the theater — cheaper, for one thing, and less foul-smelling — and best of all, her imagination belongs to her alone, and no one can steal bits of it away to turn a quick profit.

 

     When she and Azelma were younger they played with the kitten they used to have, and it was warm and soft, miles better than any doll. One of her favorite games was to be a rich lady visiting another rich lady with her child. Her sister pretended to notice nothing strange, and then slowly asked questions about the fur and the ears and the feet and finally the tail. They suppressed giggles throughout this willful suspension of disbelief, but with practice Éponine was able to say, “Yes, that’s my little girl. All the little girls look like that these days,” with a completely straight face.  
     She smiles to herself recalling the game, and wishes for some animal to take care of, but knows that it would just be another mouth to feed, and she won’t put an animal through that now that she knows better. She shouldn’t have forced that long-ago cat into clothes and a role it clearly didn’t want to inhabit. It is too late now for regret when the animal is grown, and perhaps even old enough to die, but with the perspective born of nearly a decade, she can see more similarities than differences with that feline “little girl.”  
     When she was a child she took childhood for granted, and thought that everything was good and more importantly that everything would stay exactly the same. Now she is unable to point to the moments small things shifted, nor even the moments she noticed that today was different from yesterday. Memories are strange, especially when the minds that house them are still growing and learning. She must have said to herself, “Well! That’s just the size that meals are! Every dinner these days is just a bit too small to make it to the next day without a pang of hunger.” Even more extraordinary, she must have said all this without words or even conscious thought. Later it was normal to go days without eating more than a stale scrap of bread, or to dodge a fist that would have been reserved for the Lark once. It has always gone without question that a girl’s job is t leap up and do whatever task her father demands of her. This last is still the case, but it is easier to push back when it is important enough, or when her father is in something approaching a good mood.  
     The day she reflected how _lucky_ she was to move into a building whose roof leaked and whose windows let in the chill, instead of huddling together under archways, was the day she really considered that her life wasn’t an ideal or even typical one. But what the hell, this was just how things were, so why mope about what can’t be fixed and could have been broken a lot more? Some nights she still can’t get used to having a bed again, though it’s been almost a year, so she wanders the alleys of scenes that will never get written down and pretends she has no need of a bed. She dreams standing up, which makes it easier to believe that the visions are getting her somewhere. The morning after she yawns for lack of sleep, but it’s either that or rising from a terrible mattress to rub her sore muscles. You can get used to anything, so she gets used to this.

 

     Until she’s sitting in her room between a mother who’s not as ill as she acts, and a sister who doesn’t need to fake her injury, and staring at the old man and the girl who condescended to bring them an armful of clothes stitched together with moralizing. It is hard to believe that the beautiful girl with roses in her cheeks is the same who used to wear _her_ cast-off clothes, but it’s the hands that give it away, fluttering at her sides the way they always did. She compares the Lark’s furs and laces to her own tattered shift and every part of her wants to scratch that finery away and scream that it’s not _fair_!  
     She, _Éponine_ , was the one born to be a mother, who was promised softness and light as long as she was good and patient, and just look at her now! She must have wanted her happy ending _too much_ , and is now struck down for her envy and pride. Meanwhile, the girl who used to retreat under the table was destined to a life of drudgery. That much was obvious and all you had to do to know that was to just look at her family — she didn’t even have a mother! Yet somehow she ended up with a kind old man for a papa.  
     Someone must have shuffled their stories together wrong, and it’s not even worth it to curse the author of them all.


End file.
